Best policy: At the recent GATH conference in Ålesund, Erna Solberg former Norwegian Prime Minister said that the salmon farming industry needs to be honest about its environmental challenges especially in relation to sea lice and mortality.
Yet again, it is the salmon farming industry that is portrayed as being at fault. Regular readers may remember that the head of IMR said that the industry must learn from its mistakes. However, when it was pointed out to him that the mistakes are in the science, his silence was deafening.
Unfortunately, the narrative about the environmental impacts of salmon farming is promoted by the wild fish sector and a scientific clique. As happens in Scotland, government relies on the advice of a small group of scientists who seem to endorse the killing of wild fish for sport but are quick to condemn the problems of wild fish as being the fault of salmon farmers, whilst generally refusing to enter into an open debate about their views.
If Mrs Solberg would like to see an honest discussion about the impacts of salmon farming, then this needs to include a much wider representation of those involved in salmon farming. Regulation of such an important industry to Norway should not be left in the hands of a small group of scientists who might have their own vested interests. The problem is that these scientists are not just responsible for assessing the impacts of salmon farming, they are also involved in the research. A scroll of the scientific literature they use includes many papers which they have authored. They are unlikely to make any assessment that might contradict their own findings, whether right or wrong.
It has always been a puzzle why industry representatives are not involved in the assessment process. After all, they have a better understanding of their own industry than anyone and therefore should be involved in the process. Salmon farming is not a scientific process but one that involves all kinds of factors and therefore should not be considered by just the scientific community. After all, as I discussed in the last issue of reLAKSation of only 2864 scientific works reviewed for NASCO, only 17 include primary data. The others are mainly theoretical. The reliance on such papers means that a whole industry is being regulated in a totally abstract way that bears no relation to reality.
As a consequence, Norway is looking to supposedly more environmentally acceptable methods of production that will inevitably strangle the industry’s future. This is not intended to safeguard the wild fish that such moves are supposed to protect. If the established narrative is correct, then the intention is to ensure fish populations are sufficiently large to enable salmon anglers to catch and kill these fish for sport. Where is the honesty in that?
Pressure: It would be really nice if the Ferret investigative journalism online platform wrote a positive or even a more balanced story about salmon farming, but it never does. The Ferret says that good journalism changes things but when it comes to salmon farming, I would question whether their articles represent good journalism or simply represent an outlet for a small group of critics to voice their opinions without challenge.
The latest story relies on comments from Ariane Burgess, a green MSP who in my experience refuses to discuss the issues about salmon farming which concern her. She says that farmed salmon businesses can well afford to drive up standards and reduce their impact on the environment but rather choose to pressure the regulator and to influence policy.
Her comments are followed by those of Wild Fish who say that the salmon farming industry thinks itself above regulation and finally, John Aitchison of Coastal Communities Network says that SEPA primary task is to protect and enhance Scotland’s environment. In common with Ariane Burgess, both Wild Fish and CCN shy away from discussing their area of concern with the farming sector. This is because they all want to see the end of open net pen salmon farming which they argue has a negative impact on the environment and believe that SEPA as regulator should be intervening to make their demands happen.
The problem is that in some areas, SEPA are as badly informed as these three critics and the only way that their knowledge can be improved is if they speak and learn from the salmon industry itself. After all there is no point in enforcing certain regulations on the sector if the regulations do nothing to help the environment.
According to the Ferret, the Scottish Government says that it is right there is an ongoing discussion between the industry and SEPA. It is unclear why such discussions would be seen as being negative, unless of course those saying so want to see the end of salmon farming in Scottish waters.
At the same time, stringent regulation aimed at protecting wild fish from sea lice seems a regulation too far, if the fish are then caught and killed for sport by the wild fish sector. I have yet to hear Wild Fish come out and publicly state that there should be no killing of wild salmon and sea trout for any reason, probably because it would upset their membership.
If critics of salmon farming really cared about the Scottish environment, they would encourage and involve themselves in more open discussion about the issues instead of persuading the Ferret to write another story accusing the salmon farming industry of trying to pressure SEPA into relaxing the rules. Despite what the critics claim, salmon farming is one of the most regulated sectors in the world. Perhaps the critics would like to be more forthcoming as to why it is not.
From the horse’s mouth: This week, the ‘campaign group’ Wild Fish were quoted in the Ferret saying that the salmon farming industry feels it is above regulation and should be allowed to do what it wants. This is not surprising since this angler’s representative organisation has argued that salmon farming has been responsible for the current state of wild fish populations (even along Scotland’s east coast where there are no salmon farms). On their website under the heading ‘About Us’ they say that wild fish populations are in decline. In fact, the Atlantic salmon has declined by 70% in Scottish rivers since 2000. We exist to reverse this trend. Under the heading ‘What we do’ Wild Fish say our goal is sustainable wild fish populations. We work to diminish the key threats to wild fish from open-net salmon farming, pollution and over-abstraction.
This week Wild Fish announced their latest fund-raising campaign. Unlike other charities, the Wild Fish membership will not be out on the streets shaking collection buckets asking the public for donations to save the iconic salmon and sea trout. No, instead, they are holding their annual online auction, the preferred method of raising funds across the whole of the wild fish sector.
This year, Wild Fish have 179 lots on offer. Of these 107 are for those placing a winning bid to go fishing on a English or Welsh river or fishery. A further 22 are for fishing on a Scottish river whilst 6 are for fishing overseas including Iceland. The most expensive lot is for two anglers to go saltwater fishing for seven days in the Seychelles. The current bid is £15,200 but Wild Fish have put a guide price at £20,000. Clearly, this is not in the territory of raising money by standing in the local High Street with a collection bucket.
In total 75% of the lots involve fishing and most of the others are related to fishing. Yet endorsing fishing through their fund raising seems a counter intuitive way to ensure sustainable fish populations. Of course, despite the claims that Wild Fish are a conservation charity that appear in press reports, the organisation remains the representative body for salmon and trout anglers. The trip to the Seychelles to go saltwater fishing is one of the exceptions as the majority of lots concern the salmon and trout angling that is of most interest to their membership. Unfortunately, under their website heading of ‘what we do’ Wild Fish fail to say that what they do is go fishing.
Instead, they say that their work is to diminish the threat to wild salmon from open-net salmon farming, rather than acknowledge that since records began, salmon & trout anglers have caught and killed 6 million wild fish for sport.
A news story in the Times this week raises questions about Wild Fish’s policies. Back in August Rachel Mulrenan had commented in another Times story about the supposed high standards of the RSCPA assurance scheme for farmed salmon. This week another story in the Times highlighted that the RSPCA scheme’s guidelines say that it is unacceptable on cruelty grounds for a live fish to exceed 15 seconds out of water,
It only needs a quick look at the many images on fishery board websites of anglers holding their catch to see that having been dragged round on the end of a hook and line for several minutes or more, most of the caught fish are removed from the water for well over 15 seconds. Of course, this is not considered cruelty but well managed sport. I can only wonder how many of the 135 fishing lots offered by Wild Fish will result in fish being held out of the water for longer than the 15 seconds prescribed by the RSPCA. Perhaps such cruelty is considered acceptable because without these lots, Wild Fish believe that they will be unable to campaign against the salmon farms that they blame for all their sectors ills.